1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus and method for estimating a distance using a dual off-axis color filter aperture (DCA), and more particularly, to an apparatus and method for estimating a distance from a camera to a subject using a DCA.
2. Discussion of Related Art
In the computer vision field, object detection is widely used in an intelligence monitoring system, a robot vision, a driving monitoring, and the like. A two-dimensional (2D) image extracted by a camera has many difficulties in controlling an autonomous mobile robot in a robot vision or an overlap between objects in an intelligence monitoring system. To overcome these difficulties, research is being conducted to extract three-dimensional information from an image.
Stereoscopic vision that has been studied for tens of years obtains distance information by performing matching between two images that are acquired from two cameras. Since this method acquires two images simultaneously and performs matching between the images, the amount of information may increase, calculation complexity may increase, and an error may be amplified during a disparity calculation process.
Recently, various calculation cameras for acquiring additional information from images using optical characteristics and image processing have been developed. With such additional information acquired from optical characteristics of a camera, a limitation of stereo cameras may be overcome using various methods, such as refocusing, increasing a dynamic range, and depth-induced editing. However, the above-described methods may have a lot of calculations or cannot accurately estimate a distance from a camera to a subject.